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Exposing an antisemitic fraud: The case of ‘State of Terror’ by Thomas Suarez

As each page of the Thomas Suarez book, State of Terror, is turned, another horrific statement against Zionists appears. The book was called a ‘tour de force‘ by Ilan Pappé. Jenny Tonge referred to its central ‘truth‘. Publishers Weekly suggested it is ‘an impressive display of historical excavation’.

So we (David Collier and Jonathan Hoffman), went digging to see if the Thomas Suarez story ‘held up’ – to see if he had used his sources properly when he wrote his book. This meant dozens of visits to the National Archives at Kew, and other days spent diligently reading books by anti-Zionists such as Ilan Pappé, Hanna Braun and Yosef Grodzinsky. There is no getting away from it. ‘State of Terror‘ isn’t just a vile book, it isn’t just antisemitic, it is a pyramid of errors. Far too many for this to ever have been accidental.

As Thomas Suarez opens his introduction he uses a quote from 1946. He forgets to tell his readers that he cannot confirm it was ever said. This is the way the book begins. The first archive file he lists says something very different to the way he describes events in 1938. This is the way the book ends. Between these two are a couple of hundred pages full of unsupportable libels. We know they are unsupportable because we checked some of the source material behind the claims. Today we publish our report.

Most of the errors inside the book stem from sloppy research. The result of a rabid little man, motivated by hatred, grabbing at archive files in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that sounds like it is attacking Zionists. Suarez is no historian and does not possess the frame of mind to provide context to anything he writes. For a wannabee historian, this is a fatal weakness.

Thomas Suarez and his errors

There is no understanding about how to use the material he has in his hands. His choice of the source he uses, often gives away his motives. When the most reliable source for a particular event would be the National Archives he used for years, he still turns to the ramblings of an anti-Zionist Israeli, simply because it works best for the picture he desperately wants to paint. The result of that episode was yet another huge historical mistake in his book.

The inversion of meaning is another common theme throughout. We lost count of the number of times his words were contradicted by the source material he used in support of his writing. The ability to twist the meaning in such a fashion was only outdone by his use of the strategy of omission, skipping over all those items that proved his central arguments were false.

Here is just one example from the many errors listed in our report. From the book, page 106. The year is 1945. Teddy Kollek (future Mayor of Jerusalem) was being interviewed by the British. Suarez claims that Kollek suggested the Hagana, Irgun and Stern ‘choreographed’ events. That ‘according to Kollek, the Hagana, and Irgun would agree on a particular attack, the Irgun would carry it out, and then the Jewish Agency would then publicly condemn it‘.

This line of reasoning is important to the Suarez story. Suarez cannot show that some Zionists were extremists. He needed to show all the Zionists were. Thus, the actions of Stern and the Irgun had to be shown to be undercover actions of the Hagana. Without this, Suarez has no story. In his endnotes (number 202), Suarez suggests this information came from Kollek ‘interview number 8’. This is the content of the interview:

It says nothing of what Suarez alleges. In fact, it says the opposite. Kollek said that there was ‘no question of Irgun and Stern as organisations being controlled by, or working with Hagana‘. Going on to further point out that Hagana explicitly ‘would not agree‘ to cooperation. Rather, they wanted the Irgun to ‘break up‘.

And on the strategy of omission, this an extract from a further interview with Kollek in August:

According to Hagana – Stern and Irgun ‘Terrorism was fatal to Zionism, and the Jewish Agency did not agree with terrorist methods‘. Had this one snippet been put inside the book that Thomas Suarez wrote, his entire argument would collapse. No surprise that it was overlooked.* (see edit below).

Butchering truth

The Thomas Suarez book ‘State of Terror‘ butchers truth. It butchers history. For that we call it a fraud. But the underlying message is far more sinister than a nasty little man making up stories. Suarez blames the Jews for everything. At one point, he infers the Holocaust and Second World War might not have happened without them.

There are no depths to which Thomas Suarez seems unwilling to stoop in his mission to attack the Zionist Jews. Reading the book the first time was nauseating. When you read it again and realise that in many cases the author is making things up, you are left with little doubt about the motivation.

At one point, Thomas Suarez attacks a Holocaust survivor who had escaped Josef Mengele’s Block 10 medical experiment laboratory, simply because she got in the way of the story he wanted to tell. His is not a humanitarian argument. When Holocaust survivors, refugees, wash up on the shore seeking freedom, Suarez condones forcibly removing them and shipping them away to be put back into camps. If a ‘good Jew’ becomes a ‘bad Jew’ simply by escaping from Nazi Germany to British Palestine, then the only good Jew becomes a dead one.

View this recent tweet by Suarez:

Thomas Suarez and Antisemitism

The message that is screaming from the pages as you turn them is that this is an author who has issues with Jews. From a story of a drunken Jewish soldier in 1919, to events surrounding Jewish children who survived the Holocaust, Suarez sees Jews as Zionist monsters who ‘hijack’ Judaism, ‘kidnap’ Jewish orphans and ‘coerce’ Displaced Persons.

This book has an antisemitic stench from the very first page to the very last and Thomas Suarez wrote every word of it. According to Suarez, when it came to saving Jews in Germany, Zionists only did it for their money. For the most part, Suarez has every Jewish person in British Palestine willing to let their family members rot. Each one of these ‘monsters‘ plotting to ethnically cleanse the Arabs. Suarez even included in this libel Jews who wanted a bi-national state. There is no spectrum, no way out, if you are there, you are guilty. This is the Suarez method. It is inhumane, racist, and against Jews, clearly antisemitic.

We stopped the research because we ran out of time. The material is far from exhausted. On the last day, a few final statements were randomly chosen, with dozens of suspect items cast aside. Whatever is in the 20,000+ word report, there is just as much still uncovered.

Suarez’s book was praised by a Professor at the University of Exeter. It is lauded by a sitting member of the House of Lords. The rabidly antisemitic SPSC recently promoted a speaking tour for the book. Thomas Suarez delivered a vile talk on the campus at SOAS. Publishers Weekly endorsed and promoted a putrid antisemitic book. Now he is off to the USA, where the First Amendment allows any old antisemite to speak freely.

We cannot let this type of historical fraud continue unchecked. It is time to draw a line in the sand. We see you. We know what you are. This report is published today, so others can see you too.

David Collier & Jonathan Hoffman. London, 4 September 2017.

*EDIT 7/9/2017. There seems to be some clarity required over the Hagana and Irgun. This is Suarez pillar #9. We all know that some Hagana / Irgun cooperation took place, (esp post-1945). Suarez’s intention however is to erase the ideological differences between the Hagana, Irgun and Stern and blur time periods. It is part of the general strategy to suggest all Jews in Palestine were extremists.

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Really Stephen? Grainy photos of two people who are near enough to each other to build conspiracies? You should know me well enough to know I really do not care. Jonathan simply isn’t politically aligned with the far right. It is a guilt by association take down and I really have no time for it. How about commenting on Suarez’s ‘scholarship’?

I am not interested in Suarez or his scholarship David. Certainly not enough to read a whole book, So many books to read so little time. It follows that I have no plans to read a 20,000 word rant on his scholarship.

My issue is that we cannot let accusations of racism from someone with Jonathan’s track record of homophobia and racism go without putting it into context. You should get this being a big fan of context. It is time to update the evidence pertaining to Jonathan;s alliance with the Muslim hating/baiting far right. It will be a couple of weeks before I can get started. But hey ho what is a couple of weeks.

You also are a big fan of history. So here is a prediction.

History will record that your admiration for, and collaboration with, ( not mere association with ) rabid racists like Jonathan, Sharon Klaff, Harvey Garfield, and fake Jew fraudsters like Simon Cobbs will be your undoing and plunge you into the realm of zero credibility.

The history has already begun to be written . Cambridge Quakers have now made it clear they don’t trust Jonathan Hoffman. They are now hardly likely yo trust David Collier are they ? Drip drip drip goes the credibility.

Oh Stephen, why oh why do you persist in such a weak line of attack. The credibility is built through my work. If I am so wrong, if I am making all this up, then surely my being ‘discredited’ is just an easy bit of research for someone. Look at my articles, investigate, and show how I have distorted the evidence. You can’t of course, because I don’t distort, and I go out of my way to try to adhere to the straight path. It is how credibility is built in the first place. So all that is left are a bunch of people who do twist the truth and do cheat, desperately trying to capture a picture of me, standing anywhere near someone unsavoury. That would then be used to unfairly smear me. Sound familiar? Oh wait, that’s just what is being done to Jonathan.

David you are wilfully ” misunderstanding ” what I am saying. I am not talking about whether you are right or wrong. I am not much interested in the rightness or wrongness of what you say. As ever my concern is the use to which what you say is put.

Fortunately it being a joint effort with the well known buffoon and dissembling liar Jonathan Hoffman, what you say will have little credibility among people of good will, bearing in mind they are unlikely to read the thing anyway. Even less inclined when they see the name Jonathan Hoffman up in lights. So you are preaching to the converted who also are unlikely to read it. For example Simon Cobbs is singing its praises. Do you really and truly believe that that illiterate pretend Jew and fraudster has read it ?

Credibility is a function of many things. Rightness or wrongness is just one of them.

I don’t know why you or anyone else bothers with him. He’s a rather pathetic little creature, more to be pitied than condemned because he knows now better. (I don’t know him personally so these comments are based solely of his contribution to debates such as this where he displays the most extraordinary ignorance and nastiness.)

David / Jonathan : thank you for this tome. You know it will find favour with those who trust you. How can we make it impact on Suarez and the wider population who might be persuaded to accept what he says as gospel since it’s endorsed by a Professor and a member of the House of Lords inter alia?

Bellamy is another media response hack that gets a few bob per contribution from agenda driven paymasters in return for making demeaning, ad homs. Remarks on the subject matter are always avoided as this promotes debate in which he has often admitted he has no interest. If he’s not here, he’ll probably be seen bullying old dears at Knitting-ZioNanas4israel.com or #JewsKilledBambi. It’s not much of a living but it’s regular.

It’s a reflex action straight from the Marxist textbook of counter agit prop . Smear and defame your opponent when all else fails and your argument is proven to be invalid .Delve into their social media and note the regular weekend workshops on all manner of anti establishment topics cf netpol. If their lips move, you know they are lying.

Your analysis of Suarez’ book is very similar to the analysis I heard in a speech by Deborah Lipstadt of David Irving’s so-called forays into history. It is an outrage to grace people like Irving, Pappé and Suarez with the epithet “historians”, they are as factual as Father Christmas and the tooth fairy.

You know Josephine, I was actually surprised when I began the research. I thought I would find carefully selected facts, littered with a bias commentary. Or in other words, a book dependent on omission. But what we uncovered was shocking. This book is simply a work of absolute fiction that has completely distorted the very material it claims to rely upon. I actually think the tooth fairy has more credibility.

Thank you David and Jonatan for taking the trouble to expose and catalogue the output of this pseudo historian cum musician who earns his crust by promoting Palestinianism. The night we heard him at SOAS it was evident just from memory that the man had an alternative mission, but some people need references and you guys have provided just that. Well done.

Yisrael, Shalom. Thanks for the link, I will look through it, as I am not done with him yet. We spent weeks retracing his steps. Using the very source files he did. Where do you think we may have gone wrong with Kollek? It seemed pretty straightforward to me, reading the archive.

sorry, find it a bit confusing. You interpret Kollek’s words as indicating: “. Kollek said that there was ‘no question of Irgun and Stern as organisations being controlled by, or working with Hagana‘. Going on to further point out that Hagana explicitly ‘would not agree‘ to cooperation. Rather, they wanted the Irgun to ‘break up‘.”

The Hagana, however, just at the time, did agree to the suggestion of a coordinating committee.
At the end of October 1945, Ben-Gurion was finishing his touches on the United Resistance Movement which would unite the Hagana and the Palmach with the Irgun and Lechi and undertake what the British would call “terrorism”.

Here is an Irgun historian’s version of that time:

“…Labor’s attachment to the White Paper [after WW II] greatly disappointed Jewish leaders in Palestine and the Diaspora. On September 23, 1945, Moshe Sneh, head of the Haganah General Headquarters, cabled David Ben-Gurion (then in London) as follows:
[…] It has been proposed that we stage a grave incident. Then we will issue a statement declaring that this is only a warning, and hint at much more serious incidents to follow.
Ben-Gurion replied swiftly on October 1:1
[…] We must not confine our reaction in Palestine to immigration and settlement. It is essential to adopt tactics of S [sabotage] and reprisal. Not individual terror, but retaliation for each and every Jew murdered by the White Paper. The S. action must carry weight and be impressive, and care should be taken, insofar as possible, to avoid casualties…

The two rival factions [Irgun and Lehi] should be invited to collaborate on condition that there is uniform authority and that total discipline is observed. Constant effort is required to ensure solidarity within the Yishuv and, above all, among the fighters, for the sake of the struggle.

Our reaction should be constant, bold and calculated for a considerable period…
Sneh regarded Ben-Gurion’s letter as a warrant for the launching of military action against the British.

On October 9, 1945, a Palmach unit set out to free by force the 208 illegal immigrants detained at the Atlit camp. The attackers easily overcame the guards, and the immigrants, together with their liberators, escaped to Kibbutz Beit Oren in the Carmel mountains.

The attack on the Atlit detention camp was the first anti-British action of the Palmach, and symbolized the first action of many in the coming weeks.

The first meeting between the leaders of the Haganah and representatives of the Irgun command was held in August 1945. It marked the beginning of negotiations, which culminated in an agreement on the establishment of a united front, the United Resistance. The Irgun and the Lehi accepted the authority of the Zionist leadership vis a vis the armed struggle against the British rulers of the country. It was agreed that the two organisations would maintain their organizational autonomy, but would not carry out operations against the British without the approval of the headquarters of the United Resistance, with the exception of ‘purchase’ activities (i.e. the confiscation of arms from British sources).

The first operation of the united front was an attack on the national railway network, which came to be known as the ‘Night of the Trains’. Haganah units sabotaged some 200 points along the railway tracks, while a joint unit of the Irgun and the Lehi attacked the main railway station at Lydda. ”

So, either Kollek was fooling his contacts, or his was unaware of behind-the-scenes negotiations.

To strengthen my point, here is a second, slightly different version:

“…at the end of October, 1945, an agreement was signed between the three organizations for the establishment of The United Resistance. The following are the main points of the agreement: (Menahem Begin, ‘In the Underground’ vol.2, p.7)

a. The Haganah organization has entered upon a military struggle against British rule.
b. The Irgun and Lehi will not implement combat plans without the approval of the command of the United Resistance.
c. The Irgun and Lehi will carry out combat missions assigned to them by the command of the United Resistance Movement.
d. Discussions of proposed operations will not be formal. Representatives of the three fighting organizations will meet regularly, or whenever the need arises, and will discuss such plans from a political and practical viewpoint.
e. Once operations have been approved in principle, experts from the three organizations will clarify the details.
f. The need to obtain the consent of the United Resistance command does not apply to arms’ acquisition (i.e. confiscating weapons from the British). Irgun and Lehi have the right to conduct such operations at their discretion.
g. The agreement between the three fighting organizations is based on ‘positive precepts’.
h. If, at some time, the Haganah should be ordered to abandon the military struggle against the British authorities, the Irgun and Lehi will continue to fight.

The leadership of the United Resistance consisted of two representatives of the Haganah (Yisrael Galili and Moshe Sneh), an Irgun representative (Menahem Begin) and a Lehi representative (Nathan Yellin-Mor). It held general discussions, and the Irgun and Lehi were required to submit all plans of action to this body.

Operations were authorized by the Haganah command, after discussions between the senior operations staff: Yitzhak Sadeh (Palmach commander), Eitan Livni (Irgun’s chief operations officer) and Yaakov Eliav (Lehi’s chief of operations). Later, Eliav withdrew from these meetings and asked Eitan Livni to represent him. The Haganah command had the right to veto plans on operational, political or other grounds.

In November 1, 1945, the three organizations conducted their first joint attack, the “Night of the Trains”. That night, Haganah units sabotaged some 153 spots along railway tracks throughout the country, and blew up patrol launches in Jaffa and Haifa ports, while a joint Irgun-Lehi unit, commanded by Eitan Livni, attacked the main railway station at Lydda.”

Thank you for taking the time to respond. We seem to be at cross purposes. Although I am positive this is the way Suarez will choose to deflect from his mistakes (by suggesting that even though his sources don’t hold up, there were still agreements). I am not sure if you looked at the report, or just the blog. The report set out to analyse whether Suarez used his sources properly or not. There were most certainly meetings between the groups. Even the record with Kollek is quite clear. As you point out, this particular point in time (post war), saw a realignment of positions that opened the opportunity for increased cooperation. This, off and on, would continue until 1948. At no point, did I seek to deny the existence of agreements, nor of cooperation, nor even of some joint operations. In this post war context, I would have thought such a growing alignment to have been a natural development against the new reality.

However, none of this has much to do with Suarez and Kollek. What we sought to do was look at how Suarez used his sources. Suarez is not interested in whether there was or was not an alignment in 1945. Suarez is interested in blurring the lines until the Stern and Hagana look the same. To strip context and dates and events away until all Zionists are members of the Stern. For this reason he writes about 1942 that the goals of the revisionists and the goals of the mainstream where the same. In truth they were never the same. Even post-agreement. As you are well aware the political spectrum in Israel is diverse and brutal. Always was. Temporary coalitions are merely staging posts in preparation for the next struggle. But I digress.

The question that is raised is this. Does Suarez set out a factual argument on page 105/6, which is supported by the documents he cites in end-note 202.

In the discussion, Suarez says this

“according to Kollek, the Hagana, and Irgun would agree on a particular attack, the Irgun would carry it out, and then the Jewish Agency would then publicly condemn it.”

To support this statement, he uses 3 files. All of them are in the archive at Kew. FO 371/45377 CO 537/1715 and KV 5/29. You have the book so you can access these pages. First Suarez talks about a Sharett comment. This is supported (roughly) by the file. Then Suarez pushes Kollek’s suggestion. The source for this was given as interview 8. An image of the entire extract is in my blog. Finally, Suarez suggests a defence summary (in response to Kollek) says ‘the Hagana will have a lot of its dirty work done for it, without carrying responsibility‘.

So I am only concerned with whether or not Kollek said it, and do the documents support Suarez’s claim. Which is why we are somewhat at cross purposes if you believe this argument is over whether or not there was some Hagana cooperation in late 1945. It is his comment, his citation, his source. From an academic perspective, that is the check.

So I ask you to look at the image of interview 8 above. It may well be that Kollek is stringing the British along. In fact, that is precisely the issue. It appears that Kollek was working for the agency and being used by them as a way of cooperating against terrorists. Or in other words, Kollek was a British informant, (with the agreement of the Agency), handing over knowledge about the Irgun. The idea then, that Kollek would be selling the agency up the river, becomes even more absurd. If, as seems to be the case, Kollek was acting as a go-between, it makes perfect sense, that as the groups began to align, Kollek’s information began to be less trustworthy. Perhaps this is part of the reason these meetings stopped.

But, the bottom line remains this. You have in the image above, the entire Kollek extract (no 8) with regard to the Suarez statement. On this he based his claim. Do we have evidence Kollek said those things or don’t we? It appears he did not. Suarez’s source does not back up his claim at all, and given the context, it would be absurd for Kollek to have said it.

As a side note, this closing comment ‘the Hagana will have a lot of its dirty work done for it, without carrying responsibility’ is also somewhat twisted. It is part of a larger speculative comment about ‘what if’. Notice the use of the word ‘will have’ in the quote. The summary, wasn’t quite a summary. It was just Suarez playing butcher again. I hope this makes it more clear.

It’s weird. David’s opponents are clearly so intimidated by his work that they are compelled to commission regular media response to attempt to deflect, demean and demoralise him and ensure that no comment thread gets a free ride. So, given their anxieties, how come this prick Bellamy is the best that they can come up with?